Russell Vought

Quick facts

• Full name: Russell Thurlow “Russ” Vought
• Born: March 26, 1976, Trumbull, Connecticut
• Education: BA, Wheaton College (1998); JD, George Washington University Law School (2004)
• Current role: Director, Office of Management and Budget (confirmed February 6, 2025, 53-47)
• Known for: Authoring Project 2025’s chapter on the Executive Office of the President; architecting the Schedule F federal-workforce reclassification; founding the Center for Renewing America; openly embracing the “Christian nationalist” label under his own name
• Family: Married to Mary Grace Vought (a Heritage Foundation vice president for strategic communications) until their August 2023 divorce; two daughters

Key positions

Biography

Russell Vought was born March 26, 1976, in Trumbull, Connecticut, to a Marine Corps veteran and electrician father and an elementary-school-teacher mother. He graduated from Wheaton College, an evangelical Christian college in Illinois, in 1998, and earned a law degree from George Washington University in 2004. He spent roughly a dozen years (2004-2018) as a conservative congressional staffer, rising to policy director of the House Republican Conference and executive and budget director of the Republican Study Committee, before serving as vice president of Heritage Action for America, the Heritage Foundation’s advocacy arm.

Vought joined the first Trump administration as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget (confirmed 50-49 in February 2018) and became OMB director in July 2020 (confirmed 51-45). In that first tenure he developed the original “Schedule F” executive order, issued in October 2020, which stripped civil-service protections from policy-influencing positions; it was rescinded by President Biden in January 2021. In the interregnum, Vought founded and led the Center for Renewing America (2021-2024), a think tank whose stated mission is “to renew a consensus of America as a nation under God.” The organization served as a Project 2025 advisory body, and Vought has said it drafted “over 350 executive orders, regulations, and memos” for a second Trump term. He personally authored Project 2025’s chapter on the Executive Office of the President, which set out the unitary-executive, impoundment, and Schedule F frameworks. President Trump nominated him to return to OMB in November 2024, and the Senate confirmed him on February 6, 2025, by a 53-47 party-line vote — placing the author of the blueprint in line authority to implement it.

Vought is among the few senior officials of the second Trump administration to embrace the “Christian nationalist” label in print under his own name. In a signed Newsweek op-ed, “Is There Anything Actually Wrong With ‘Christian Nationalism?’” (March 22, 2021, updated June 11, 2021), he called the term “a rather benign and useful description” and wrote that “there is nothing at all wrong with” the orientation it describes; the Center for Renewing America republished the column on its own site. In undercover recordings made by the Centre for Climate Reporting and reported by Rolling Stone (August 15, 2024), he said it was time to “rehabilitate Christian nationalism.” POLITICO reported in February 2024 that the Center for Renewing America was developing plans to infuse Christian-nationalist ideas into a second Trump administration, including a “Theology of American Statecraft” speaker series in which Vought made the “Christian Case for Immigration Restriction.” In a January 2023 post on X, Vought wrote that he was “proud to work with” former Trump official William Wolfe — a Center for Renewing America visiting fellow — “on scoping out a sound Christian Nationalism.”

In his second term Vought has overseen the revival of Schedule F (rebranded “Schedule Policy/Career”), advanced budget-impoundment strategies including “pocket rescissions” that his Center for Renewing America argued would test the constitutionality of the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, and used the 2025 government shutdown to pursue federal layoffs. In secretly recorded 2024 remarks obtained by ProPublica, he said of federal workers: “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected… we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.” ProPublica has profiled him as “Trump’s Shadow President”; NPR (October 30, 2025) framed him as “the man behind President Trump’s dismantling of the federal government.”

Sources

1. “Russell Vought” — Ballotpedia (positions, confirmation votes, biography). https://ballotpedia.org/Russell_Vought
2. “Russell Vought” — Wikipedia (birth date, education, career chronology). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Vought
3. Russell Vought, “Is There Anything Actually Wrong With ‘Christian Nationalism?’” — Newsweek, March 22, 2021 (updated June 11, 2021) (signed self-identification). https://www.newsweek.com/there-anything-actually-wrong-christian-nationalism-opinion-1577519
4. “Project 2025 Co-Author Says It’s Time to ‘Rehabilitate’ Christian Nationalism” — Rolling Stone, August 15, 2024 (undercover recordings). https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/project-2025-author-russell-vought-undercover-reporters-1235081241/
5. “OMB’s Russell Vought, the Christian ’nation-ist’ driving Project 2025 and DOGE” — Religion News Service, June 23, 2025. https://religionnews.com/2025/06/23/russ-vought/
6. “What You Should Know About Russ Vought, Trump’s Shadow President” — ProPublica. https://www.propublica.org/article/about-russell-vought-trump-shadow-president